


Partners

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: F/M, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:45:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcee and Knock Out team up to pursue Airachnid, but it does not go to plan. </p><p>Contains: h/c, graphic violence, medical scene, explicit consensual sticky smut, femmes with spikes trope, spoilers for season 2 of TFP, AU</p><p>Written for acidgreenflames to the prompt Arcee/Knock Out, hurt/comfort, for the tf_fic_trader 2013 exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AcidGreenFlames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcidGreenFlames/gifts).



"You think you're the only one who's hurting?" Arcee vaulted over a gulch, not waiting for the Decepticon to catch up. So what if he'd also lost a partner to Airachnid? It didn't give him a monopoly on grief. 

A grunt sounded from behind, then the sullen rev of a powerful grounder engine. "I never said it hurt," Knock Out announced. At some point in the last few miles, he'd got his confidence back, that repulsive veneer of nonchalance, like nothing ever touched him and everything just rolled right off his shiny polished hood. 

"Sure," Arcee said. "Whatever.” His recovery was impressive. A mere half hour earlier he'd been a sad tangle of crashed metal, shrieking threats and curses into the sky. 

He'd been so loud, he hadn't heard her approach. She should have driven on by, she could have caught up with Airachnid already. But she'd stopped, she'd heard him out, she'd made him an offer. 

He'd accepted the truce, and her help, and now she was stuck with him. 

Arcee hit a dirt track and transformed. The going was easier here, the trail warmer. Airachnid couldn't be far. 

"I _didn't_ say it hurt,” Knock Out persisted. “I said I was _angry_." He transformed too, coming up fast in Arcee's mirrors. A trail of dust rose behind them; grit pinged against her undercarriage. 

She held the centre of the track. There wasn't space for him to overtake, and she was keen on keeping it that way. "So I didn't catch you crying," she said. "My mistake." 

The track narrowed and Knock Out reverted to robot mode with a shout of frustration. Arcee wove between the dry trunks of desiccated trees, the thuds of his foot-steps a fading echo. Tattered strands of webbing hung from low branches, and here and there the dry ground rose in a fresh-churned mound. 

She was here all right. 

Knock Out yelled something, but he was too far back and his words were lost. Let him catch up. Airachnid was Arcee's. For Tailgate. For Arcee herself. For Jack, and the nightmares that still woke him sweating and shaking in the dark. 

Arcee sped up. The ground had begun to vibrate, soft and low, the subsonic harmony of a spacecraft idling, waiting for its captain. 

Too bad its captain wouldn't be coming back, Arcee thought, and a thrill shivered through her frame. 

A shadow passed overhead, racing in the direction she had come. If she hadn't been watching for strands of web, she would have missed it. Arcee pulled a fast one-eighty, up on her rear tire, rubber digging a gouge in the dirt. 

In the distance a weapon fired once. 

She could find no warm place in her spark for Decepticons, but no-one deserved to die at Airachnid's hands: trapped and bound, immobile, helpless. Arcee gunned her engine. The seconds spun out, like driving though a dream. No matter how hard she pushed herself she would never be quick enough. 

Then she was there and braking hard, and Knock Out was down, Airachnid crouched above him, her head slowly turning to Arcee, purple optics widening. 

Arcee hit a root and flipped, transforming as she spun, her guns fitting neatly into the palms of her hands. She was firing before she landed, and Airachnid was off, up into the trees. Arcee shot after her, trying to get a bead, but as she rounded yet another tree her left arm wrenched behind her back, and it was a moment of furious straining before she realised it was the web that had caught her. 

Screaming her frustration at the darkening sky, Arcee grasped for all the calm she could find. She shouldn't struggle. Struggling would only make it worse. She transformed her hand into a blade, and carefully sliced through the strands. A few cautious steps from the tree, and she was off again. Blue glowed in spots on branches, dripping to the floor. Knock Out's single shot had hit home. Good. 

The ground continued to vibrate, but the pitch had changed, the pattern tighter. Arcee leapt a fallen tree, and pressed on. The ship couldn't be far. 

The ground trembled. The ship was launching. 

" _No!_ " Arcee sprinted for the break in the trees, a fresh cloud of dust rising around her. Her vents clogged, and she coughed it out, firing blind through the muck. 

Her shots scraped the hull, scorches fast fading to a pathetic sooty grey. The ship pulled slowly from the earth. Arcee fired as quickly as she could pull the trigger , but the ship continued to climb, earth cascading from its curves. 

Arcee fired until her gun spat sparks; until Airachnid's ship had vanished through the high haze of cloud, and the dust began to settle around her again. 

* * *

Knock Out heard the scream. He knew that sound, a cry born of grief and frustration, a fierce howl of retribution denied. His spark sang with it, a resonance that sped through his wires and tingled in his fists. He laughed into the muck, face-down with his hands limp in the traitor's webbing. His chassis warmed, a hot wetness spreading from his chest. It lapped against his chin, and filled his mouth. 

Dust blew gently over him, sticking to the web, to his armour. His frame cooled; condensation dripped. It carried the dirt into his seams, and clogged in his scratches. 

He shuttered his optics, and when he opened them Arcee was kneeling beside him with a knife to his throat. 

He stared, barely able to process how much deadlier she was than he had ever thought, before she tugged the blade neatly through the webbing and tossed it aside with a grunt of disgust.

“You're free,” she said, rocking back on her heels. “Truce is over, go home.”

Knock Out groaned, and pushed up. His cables twanged, his arms felt like rubber. He spat a clot of his own energon onto the ground, and tried to ignore the state of his paintwork. “Home's a long time ago,” he said. “Got any coolant?”

Arcee's optics narrowed, then she huffed. “Here,” she said, pulling a bottle from subspace. 

Knock Out swilled some around his mouth, and spat again. He passed the bottle back.

“Keep it.” Arcee stood, and it was only when she transformed the blade back into her hand that Knock Out realised she was shaking. “Go, I mean it. I gotta call this in.”

“Can't,” Knock Out said, before the circuits that did the thinking had time to stop him. “Injured.”

Arcee shot him a look so hostile he flinched. “Is this a trick?”

Knock Out shook his head. “I... need a hand,” he said. “It's no trick. I just...” _need Breakdown_ he thought, and his spark contracted so hard it hurt.

“What's the matter?” Arcee said. “You better not be faking-”

“I'm not faking!” Knock Out snapped. “Get the catch on my hood, the centre pulls apart.”

Arcee grimaced. “Can't you do that yourself?”

“If I could, I wouldn't be asking you now, would I?” 

“So you're asking?” Arcee said. She scuffed the forest floor with her toe. “I think you're missing the magic word.”

“Please!” Knock Out groaned. He looked up at her, optics wide in the way that had never failed to make Breakdown melt. “Please?”

Arcee took a step away, and looked like she was about to take another. Then she paused, vented deep, and threw her hands up. “Don't make me regret this.” 

She had no idea what she was doing. Knock Out couldn't just say 'hit the catch' or 'hold the secondary hose' or 'put your finger on the third valve until I've cauterised the line'. She didn't know which catch, she couldn't tell the secondary hose from any other long piece of tubing, and he was beginning to suspect she didn't even know what a valve looked like. 

Breakdown had known.

Breakdown hadn't needed to be told.

Knock Out transformed one long claw into a soldering gun, and watched the reflection in Arcee's darkened optics as he told her where to guide it. 

“She really got to you,” he said. 

Arcee nodded, but didn't answer. Her vents came slow and warm, her armour crawled with charge. She was a spring still coiled, all that hate balled up inside her with no place to go. Breakdown had been the same, after the deaths of his team. Robbed of revenge, starved of the one outlet he needed above all else. 

Back then, Knock Out had thought he'd known how it felt. He'd thought he could identify – as a doctor, as a Decepticon. 

He knew different now.

“Up a bit,” he ground out, as his spark whirled and his claws itched. “Don't want to short it.”

“Uh-huh.” Arcee leaned closer, one hand tight about his wrist, the other keeping his tubes clear of the heat. 

“Who was he?” Knock Out asked quietly, and Arcee's hand slipped. She grabbed for the hoses, and gave him another dose of hostility. Knock Out answered it with a frown. “You told me she killed your partner. What was his name?”

“Tailgate,” Arcee said. “His name was Tailgate, and that's all I'm telling you. Are we done?”

“No, and don't jiggle my primary intake hose.” 

“Sorry,” Arcee said, and although the apology was gruff it sounded honest. The light from her optics increased, presumably to illuminate the inside of Knock Out's chest. It cut off his own view of the procedure, but there was something oddly pleasant in allowing his hand to be guided. 

Arcee coughed. “You were lying,” she said. “When you told me it didn't hurt.”

“What?”

“Breakdown's death.” Arcee held still, fingers tight around his wrist. “It has to hurt.”

He grunted a reply. Admission would be failure. Not to her, perhaps, but he was a Decepticon. 

Arcee seemed to realise how tight she was squeezing, and let up a little. “How did you find out?”

Knock Out suppressed a shudder. “The hard way,” he said. He saw claws dripping red, the organic abomination in pieces on the table, finally excised from Breakdown's shattered frame. He saw a shell, hacked and broken, that had once arched beneath him in passion whole and perfect. He saw databanks exposed. He hadn't been able to stop himself. 

“That's rough,” Arcee commented, optics flicking up to his face. “Don't give me that look, I'm trying to be sympathetic.”

“I thought it was MECH,” Knock Out said, and stared at her arm to avoid her gaze. “I thought the humans killed him. But they just used his frame. It was her.”

Arcee let out a harsh exvent. “And now she's gone,” she said. “I don't know how long it'll be before I get another chance, and _ugh._ ” Her grip released, and she tried to disentangle herself. So much rage, so deep a well of anger. Had her spark ever hurt as much as his did now? Did it still hurt, after all this time?

The spur of her wrist snagged on the inside of his hood, and she swore. 

He caught her elbow, and she looked up. He held her gaze while he slowly released her. “What will you do now?” he asked. 

“I'm going home,” Arcee said. “And I'm going to shoot the scrap out of some targets.”

“Is that really going to help?” Knock Out lowered his voice, optics so wide and bright that the red glow tinged her face. “Your comrades don't understand. You want revenge, you _need_ it. So do I. It's why we came here, don't try to deny it.”

Arcee held her ground. “I'm not,” she said. 

“I think you should stay. Just for a while.”

“What?”

Knock Out tried to smile, that winning cruel smirk that had left so many strutless in his hands, but it wouldn't come. “We understand each other,” he said. “You said it hurts, and it does, but you know what's worse? Oh, I _know_ you do. What's worse is we're trapped here. What's worse is we can't give chase. She got away, and it burns. Are you going to carry that back to your Prime? Are you going to take that to Ratchet or your scout or your humans?”

“What about you?” Arcee countered. “You're telling me you can't take...” She floundered, hands balling into fists. “... _this_ ,” she spat, “back to your own side?”

“What would I get for it?” Knock Out said. He drew his chest back together, closing his hood, and swiped at the muck on his headlights. “Revenge they understand, but the rest?” He cut the power to his vocal processors. It was too much, too deep. He wasn't meant to be vulnerable. 

“You loved him,” Arcee said, and Knock Out winced. Arcee sighed, and fell from her crouch to kneeling. “You loved him, admit it.”

He tried again to brush the dirt from his hood, but succeeded only in smearing it. “If I do,” he said, reaching for a cloth in his subspace pocket, “will you stay?”

“And what?” she demanded.

This time he found a semblance of that smile. He leaned his aching frame forward, and wiped the oil from the back of her hand. “I want connection,” he said. “I want somewhere to put this... this rage. I think you do too.” 

“Is that it?” Arcee said, her gaze travelling over him. “You just want... You don't care who I am?”

This was not the time for lies. Knock Out's mouth framed a 'no', but the word never formed. He kissed her, closed-mouthed and gentler than he ever would with Breakdown, and for a moment he thought she might just leave, but her armour still crawled, and her engine still whined. She was fire and rage and anger as hot as any spark. She shoved him back, his tires bumping on the thick tree trunk. He wriggled down, their lips together and parting now, his hands smoothing the cloth across her back. 

She nudged his thighs apart, and he opened for her. She was no longer an Autobot. How could she be, with her hands light on his armour, her fingers trailing the rim of his port? She was the spirit of vengeance come to sooth him. She was a wounded soul, her hurt turned to fury. She was just like him. He bucked, inviting, and reached for her hatch. The protective prong of armour retracted, her spike emerged. 

“We'll have our revenge,” he whispered, her spike between his claws, her nodes firing at random across his palm. He shivered with the thrill of it, coaxing her wider, urging her flanges to unfurl. She held still, taking the cloth from him, and stroking it over his hood, his headlamps. Wiping away the dirt, shining his paint. And all the while her spike pressed against his opening, the first flange a tantalising pressure, making him leak. 

“Now!” he wailed, and frag he wanted it, but still she held back. 

“We'll regret this,” she said, and her hips moved by increments, the pressure on his rim growing second by teasing fractional second. 

“Maybe,” he conceded. “When it's over. But not now. No regrets now. We _need_ this.” 

She caught his legs under his knees, spreading him wider. His port clenched on the very end of her spike; his spark whirled. The rage pooled, morphing, taking the hate and the anger and funnelling it all into frustration. Heady and charged, it made him pant for air, it made him want to beg. 

“No regrets,” Arcee said, and pushed inside.


End file.
